This article was written by Najm Eldin Hassan, who holds the copyright to this material.
Photo: Annie Spratt, Unsplash
Nature’s cycle unfolds around us with the most profound meanings. Feeling the wind carrying out a swift breath across the forest and seeing the wildlife in perfect harmony, whispering peaceful sounds too slow for human hearing to detect, sends a wave of pleasure deep within your soul.
But lately, this peace has been disrupted by the constant increase in the earth’s temperature due to climate change, which has caused multiple unstoppable unfortunate events from wildfires to desertification, leaving behind acres of memories of what the green color used to look like.
Humans’ expansion and exploiting Earth’s resources viciously without caring for what comes next causes much of the damage to nature. Now, only one question needs to be asked: what have we done to the world?
Before modern civilization took its course as we know and witness today, countless generations of humans before us had an intimate relationship with nature – with the trees and forests, the wind and the rivers, which enabled people to develop a sense of community expressed in shared work and sociability.
But as the world’s population has grown uncontrollably, a shift in attitude towards green areas has occurred, causing them to shrink more every year, and causing wildlife to reach a critical point.
One million wild animals are facing extinction, and floods, wildfires, and other extreme weather have become a disturbingly common story in the news. Previously, nature had always found a way to repair the climate damage caused by human neglect and restore CO2 balance.
Still, when it became clear that we were witnessing the effects of too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we needed to take active steps immediately.
The Paris Agreement in 2016 has made people rush for many solutions, from recycling plastic to looking for perfect substitutes for oil.
However, we should have noticed simple solutions that are both cost-effective and simple to implement, such as rewilding. Rewilding is restoring the land’s eco-diversity and allowing nature to reestablish its balance.
Rewilding is not a new concept but a relatively new method. People initially struggled to define rewilding clearly and have sometimes mistaken it for agriculture.
The main difference is that most of the agriculture occurring now is for human consumption, takes a lot of chemicals to speed up the farming process, and produces lots of carbon emissions.
By contrast, rewilding aims to reduce carbon emission, doesn’t need any chemicals and pesticides, and helps endangered and wild animal species regain their place in the ecosystem.
The process of rewilding offers many solutions to humanity’s growing problems. For instance, Brazilian scientists recently discovered that restoring only 15% of former forests, degraded fields, and lakes to their prior state could capture 30% of all CO2 released since the Industrial Revolution and prevent 60% of expected extinctions.
Additionally, rewilding previously greened land areas would help absorb large amounts of water through the plants’ roots and prevent floods. The rewilding process has been proved to be a success through examples.
About an hour from London lies an historical castle on 3.5 acres of land. For 17 years, the owners tried all they could to compete with modern farming, whether by spraying the land or investing in crops, but all became a wasted effort, rewarding them with nothing but debt.
Ultimately, the couple decided out of desperation to try a new method they heard about called rewilding. They stopped plowing, mowing, and applying chemicals, and left nature to take control of the situation.
The results left them flabbergasted. The land changed from one of the most depleted areas to one of the best-renowned biodiversity spots in the UK.
What was remarkable to the owners of Knepp Castle in West Sussex, Lady Isabella Tree and Sir Charles Burrell, is how quickly nature bounced back and started to repair the damage.
The new rewilded land became a home for some animals introduced at first by the couple, then in time, endangered species found their way, declaring the land their new habitat. The rewilded land provides service to the owners and the neighboring area and farms, spreading seeds and pollination and providing a line of defence against extreme weather conditions.
Sir David Attenborough adopted the term rewilding in his documentary A Life on Our Planet as he roamed the land. Witnessing how massive our biodiversity loss is, he asked logical questions.
“What do we do?” the 97-year-old nature expert continued, adding, “To restore stability to our planet, we must restore its biodiversity, the very thing that we’ve removed… We must rewild the world.”
Even though the world vowed to protect the environment in 2016, we still commit crimes against nature. The latest decision by the Japanese government to release the radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant in the Pacific Ocean is a cause for concern.
Humanity continues to steal most of the green areas that used to protect us against carbon emissions, and now, we are failing to see the great warning signs around us. If we want to call ourselves pro-environmental, we still have a long way to go. The idea behind rewilding is an excellent effort toward a more sustainable world.
So, can humanity give room for nature to heal the wounds we caused?
References Artz, J. (2021) What is ‘rewilding’ and how can it help restore our planet’s biodiversity, Global Citizen.
Available at: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/rewilding-biodiversity-defend-the-planet/ (Accessed: 03 September 2023). Chapman, A. (2023) What is rewilding and why is it so controversial, Impakter. Available at: https://impakter.com/what-is-rewilding-and-why-is-it-so-controversial/ (Accessed: 03 September 2023). ICUN (2022) The benefits and risks of Rewilding, IUCN.
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